The present invention relates to electronic documents and more particularly to method and system for providing interest profiles for electronic documents with features to enhance the experience of reading or using the electronic document.
Increasingly, readers of documents are being called upon to assimilate vast quantities of information in a short period of time. To meet the demands placed upon them, readers find they must read documents “horizontally,” rather than “vertically,” i.e., they must scan, skim, and browse sections of interest in multiple documents rather than read and analyze a single document from beginning to end.
Documents are becoming more widely available in electronic form. Some documents are available electronically by virtue of their having been created using word processing software. Other electronic documents are accessible via the Internet. Yet others may become available in electronic form by virtue of being scanned in, copied, or faxed. Commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 08/754,721, entitled AUTOMATIC AND TRANSPARENT DOCUMENT ARCHIVING, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, details a system for generating electronic as well as hardcopy format of documents.
However, the mere availability of documents in electronic form does not assist the reader in confronting the challenges of assimilating information quickly.
Certain tools take advantage of the electronic form documents to assist harried readers. Tools exist to search for documents both on the Internet and locally. Once a document is identified and retrieved, automatic summarization techniques, such as the Reader's Helper™, described in a commonly owned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/995,616, entitled AUTOMATIC ADAPTIVE DOCUMENT HELP SYSTEM, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, helps the reader to find as well as assimilate the information he or she wants more quickly.
What is needed is a document interest profiling method that helps the reader find the information he or she wants more quickly. The document interest profiling method should be easily personalized, flexible and adaptive as well.